CSS - 'Cansei De Ser Sexy' (Subpop) Released 24/07/06

Five songs into their debut album CSS front woman Lovefoxxx snarls at us with a snotty nosed air of sarcasm “I am so hardcore/ I sound like crap and people ask for more” and she’s right. For the Sao Paolo sextet who somehow ended up on Subpop have created one of the most fervently debated about debuts of the year despite sounding like they’d never seen their instruments before going into the studio. Cansei De Ser Sexy, meaning tired of being sexy in English, are a band off the fashion pages of a glossy magazine. They got the style, with the suitably second hand store yet cool as edge, they got the looks and they’ve got the au-fait fashion conscious musical reference points straight outta the pages of New York's latest trend setter. They’ve also got an arsenal of damn ****ing cool tunes.

You see while many may accuse them of being over stylised and simply disposable, as so much is in modern life and music, CSS side step the indictment with ample offerings of self deprecation and enough self awareness to know how far they can take this schtick. What we get with ‘Cansei De Ser Sexy’ is a simple offer to party, **** and generally have fun. Nothing more, nothing less. From the opening robotic murmurings of “C S S Suxxx! C S S Suxxx!” you know they’re not going to take themselves seriously and neither should we.

Sublime moments of simplistic yet sentient art-pop are a plenty from the Tom Tom fused funk of forthcoming single ‘Lets Make Love And Listen To Death From Above’ to the demonic electro sleaze-rock of ‘Art Bitch’ which sounds like Peaches grinding all over a phallic guitar riff of gargantuan proportions as Lovefoxxx encourages us to “Lick, lick, lick my art tit/ Suck, suck, suck my art hole”. ‘This Month, Day 10’ provides us with yet more choice lines - “I’m gonna tell you what I’ll do/ I’ll break you face in two/ Spread your teeth and blood all over this neighbourhood” -  snarls our nonchalant narrator over a hot house, sweat infested groove of sexual and aggressive tension.

Its not perfect however, on moments such as the lightweight ‘Patins’ and sometimes pedestrian ‘Off The Hook’ things do drift towards the samey but on the whole we’re treated to plenty to salivate over, quite literally on many occasions. Sounding half finished, half contrived ‘Cansei De Ser Sezy’ thrusts, pulsates and throbs through thirty five minutes while pouting for the cameras all the way. God knows what it would be like if they could actually play, in fact it would probably sound shit.